Exhibition
Fountain: Maatrika
Tagore Centre, Embassy of India, Berlin
2014
Opening
The exhibition was organized by the Tagore Centre in the Embassy of India in Berlin. It was the venue, where the exhibition was held from 16th April to 13th June 2014. The opening was on 15th April 2014 at 6: 30 pm.
Artist's Note
A dark cloudy day….
In such a day, as if the sun disappeared, we feel gloomy and melancholy. Even the body gets heavier, it seems. Our thoughts tend to become negative and restless. However, even in such a day the sun hasn’t disappeared. It is just covered by thick clouds. Beyond the heavy layers of clouds still exists the sun as the source of life. Isn’t it the imagination of the artist that senses the existence of the sun in such a dark world? Isn’t it the ability of the artist that soaks in the life-energy from the sun behind dark clouds? As like the faint shadow alludes the existence of the sun in a grey day, so does the nostalgia – which all of sudden soaks us in from time to time – the existence of something primordial beyond the cloudy phenomenal world.
Even before I left Korea, I felt thirsty for the fundament of human life. I do not know when it began or how it happened. I think, that thirst made me leave my homeland in search of the fountain. As I look back, what I really learnt best from my ten-year-stay in India is that I let myself go leaning on the invisible gracious source of life and paint with hope as like praying. The paintings exhibited in the Embassy of India in Berlin are the works which are born after my learning and experience in India, and they are like the patterns drawn with the brushwork and colours inflamed by my search for the primordial space of life. It resulted in a more abstract look in some paintings, and in some other paintings it has more concrete figures, such as a mother and a child. Especially, the source of life in the form of femininity – universal motherhood – is the theme which pushes me into the remote but deep nostalgia in the last a few years.
What drives most positive power out of a human being would be love. We sense that love is feminine, and love is the spring that bestows on us the power and wisdom that set us free from ourselves - our ego, our ignorance and our desire. Faith in primordial feminine origin of life! I do not think that I have been influenced by any particular religion of India. It is rather from the earthly power of the land which one can sense there at present. I guess, that is why the Goddess of Earth (Mother Goddess) has been believed in India under many different names and with many different functions. I am assailed by doubt and wander while I paint, nevertheless, when I complete a painting having overcome such crises, I cannot but affirm again that what has led me all the way through is the eternal motherhood of Nature.
Vienna, March 2014
Impressions
